Film: A Dangerous Method: Film about Carl Jung and the beginning stages of psychoanalysis

The Asheville Jung Center

Today is an historic event in the Jungian community.  For the first time, a major film production is released with C.G. Jung as the central focus.  We will be hosting a webinar about this film on January 25.  More details will follow.  Do try to see this film in theaters and spread the word around your community if possible.  This is a great opportunity to spread the word about Carl Jung...

On August 17^th, 1904 a 17 year old Russian girl by the name of Sabina Spielrein was admitted to the famous Burghölzhi Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland into the care of a young fledgling psychiatrist by the name of Carl Gustav Jung. Fresh from reading about the newest methods of psychiatric treatment published by Sigmund Freud, a method later to be called psychoanalysis, Jung applied these new ideas to his treatment of Miss Spielrein' hysteria. In two years her disturbing symptoms subsided and Jung, impressed with this new technique and wanting to impress his new mentor, Jung used the Spielrein case to impress Freud while showing him the positive results of his method.

Thus began a relationship between three people whose influence on Jung's work would be immense in pointing the way forward to something new even as he was separating from the old. Based on John Kerr's well researched work called A Most Dangerous Method published in 1993, the play titled The Talking Cure by Christopher Hampton was published and performed in London in 2002 and focused on the relationships of Freud, Spielrein, Jung and Otto Gross. Hampton adapted the screenplay for the film eventually called A Dangerous Method starring Viggo Mortensen as Freud, Michael Fassbender as Jung and Keira Knightley as Spielrein.

As Jung crossed the sacred boundaries of medicine with his client Spielrein, he descended into his own madness even as she emerged from hers to go on to medical school and become a psychoanalyst in her own right, always harboring a deep love for Jung. Though her relationship with Jung freed her from the patriarchal shackles into which she was born, her work was never seriously recognized and she moved back to her home town in Russia, married and had children. There her psychoanalytic work focused on children. Years later she would be executed by the Nazi's marching through Russia along with all her family.

The nine years of the relationship between Jung, Spielrein and Freud shaped all their careers and fatefully led to the breakup of Freud and Jung and left a gulf between Jung and Sabina. In January 2012 we will present a televised seminar and discussion of the film A Dangerous Method by David Cronenberg while reflecting on the works from which the film drew, Kerr's A Most Dangerous Method, whose title is based on a statement of caution by William James when reading about Freud's new method of psychoanalysis and the play by David Hampton, The Talking Cure.  

AUS Jungian Discussion Group Meeting, November 9, 2011

Six of us met for the November, 2011, Jungian Discussion Group. We had a rousing conversation about a wide variety of subjects connected with Jungian Analytical Psychology.
This discussion group meets monthly on the Antioch University Seattle campus. The discussion group is open to all students, staff members, and faculty and administrative members--to anyone connected with the Antioch University Seattle community. Our next meeting convenes on Wednesday, December 14, 2011, from 1:00-3:00 pm in Room 209. We will discuss next quarter's schedule as well as any questions, topics, and concerns of the assembled group. All are welcome; please join our lively discussion of all things Jungian.

Reb Book dialogues from the Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum offers informative dialogues about the Red Book. One of the presenters is Jungian Analyst John Beebe from San Francisco. The talks are more than an hour in length. The Rubin Museum in NY also has some presentations about the Red Book. 

  http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs/detail/program_id/483

Seattle Jungian-Oriented Therapist Elizabeth Clark-Stern's New Book

Elizabeth Clark-Stern, MA, recently published her newest book: Soul Stories: Safari to Mara & Aria of the Horned Toad (2011).
Content from marketing materials (http://fisherkingpress.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=19):
The characters in Soul Stories are so alive and compelling that they jump off the page right into your heart. Clark-Stern has the rare ability to blend her imaginative poetic voice with exciting page turning plots. Soul Stories will not only touch and engage young readers but are great adventures that will appeal to all ages."

Beverly Olevin, winner of Kirkus Discoveries Best Fiction 2010 The Good Side of Bad

Soul Stories explores two worlds: the world we know with our feelings and senses--sight, scent, touch, belonging, joy, loss, renewal--and the parallel world of dreams, intuition, imagination, and the dimension of the unknown. Together these realms inform, shape, challenge, and nurture the soul. 

Safari to Mara finds our heroine on the brink of womanhood in Masai society. The only daughter in a sonless family, she is drafted to do work in the modern world, yet tradition calls her to prepare for initiation as a wife. In the wilderness of her namesake, Kenya’s Masai Mara, she finds an improbable guide who leads her into the mysterious recesses of her awakening heart.

Aria of the Horned Toad begins with the dream of a horned toad crawling out of Beatrice’s eyes,“so real I could feel his prickly little feet on my nose.” And so begins an odyssey to the source of all dreaming. Beatrice believes that in this dark and luminous place, she can find someone to fashion a dream to fix her Mama’s terrible ways, and soothe the longing in her own wild spirit.

About the Author: Elizabeth Clark-Stern is a psychotherapist in private practice in Seattle,Washington. Before embracing this beloved work, she worked as a professional screenwriter. Her produced plays and teleplays include All I Could See From Where I Stood, Help Wanted, and To See The Elephant. Her play, Out of the Shadows: A Story of Toni Wolff and Emma Jung, was performed at the International Jungian Congress in South Africa in 2007.

Product Details:

Trade Paperback: 180 pages

Publisher: Genoa House; First edition (June 21, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1926975006

ISBN-13: 978-1926975009

Clark-Stern, E. (2011). Soul stories: Safari to Mara and Aria of the horned-toad. Hamilton, ON: Genoa House.

Quotation about Working with the Opposites

Polly Young-Eisendrath and Terrence Dawson’s text offers remarkable information about Jungian concepts. One of the students in my spring quarter, 2011, Advanced Theories: Jungian course quoted the following in his final synthesis paper:

Jung enters the conversation of opposites, lets each side have its say, endures the struggle between the opposing point of view, suffers the anguish of being strung out between them, greets the resolving symbol with gratitude. The psyche, says Jung, arrives at a third point of view that includes the essence of each conflicting perspective while at the same time combining them into a new symbol. We must enter this process and cooperate with it if we are to be fully—and ethically—engaged in living. (Ulanov, as cited in Young-Eisendrath & Dawson, 2009, p. 328)

Young-Eisendrath, P., & Dawson, T. (Eds.). (2009). The Cambridge companion to Jung (2^nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Red Book Study Group

During a recent Red Book Study Group Meeting (June 12, 2011), I was struck by the following quotation (see below) from Jung's personal diary. Jung was grappling with external pressures (spirit of the times) versus internal pressure (spirit of the depths). Jung eloquently and cryptically described the process of literal versus symbolic murder of "the princes"--the external authorities and heroes. Instead, Jung suggested that we internalize this struggle to face and embrace our own incapacity, limitations, and true human nature.

But our ruler is the spirit of this time, which rules and leads in us all. It is the general spirit in which we think and act today. He is of frightful power, since he has brought immeasurable good to this world and fascinated men with unbelievable pleasure. He [sic] is bejeweled with the most beautiful heroic virtue, and wants to drive men [sic] up to the brightest solar heights, in everlasting ascent.

The hero wants to open up everything he can. But the nameless spirit of the depths evokes everything that man [sic] cannot. Incapacity prevents further ascent. Greater height requires greater virtue. We do not possess it. We must first create it by learning to live with our incapacity. We must give it life. For how else shall it develop into ability?

We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it. But that is precisely what we wanted. Incapacity will overcame us and demand its share of life. Our ability will desert us, and will believe, in the sense of the spirit of this time, that it is a loss. Yet it is no loss but a gain, not for outer trappings, however, but for inner capacity.

The one who learns to live with his incapacity has learned a great deal. This will lead us the valuation of the smallest things, and to wise limitation, which the greater height demands. If all heroism is erased, we fall back into the misery of humanity and into even worse. Our foundation will be caught up in the excitement since our highest tension, which concerns what lies outside us, will stir them up. We will fall into the cesspool of our underworld, among the rubble of the centuries in us.

The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently, you sin against incapacity. But incapability exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down. (p. 240)

 References

Shamdasani, S. (Ed.). (2009). The red book: Liber novus by C. G. Jung. New York, NY: Norton.

Legacy and Influence

50th Anniversary of Carl Gustaf Jung's Death
Carl Jung – Legacy and Influence

2nd Jun 2011; 13:00

RSA Thursday

June, 2011, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Carl Jung, one of the 20th century's most influential, and controversial, psychologists and thinkers. If you've ever thought of yourself as an extrovert or introvert, or done a Myers-Briggs test, Jung is to blame. If you've ever sat opposite a counsellor, rather than laid on a couch, Jung was the first to practice therapy this way. If you've ever cursed, or praised, the New Age, Jung has shaped your mind again.

But what of his legacy, what of his influence 50 years on? And what of the controversy too, for Jung has also been accused of everything from anti-semitism to mystical obscurantism.

Mark Vernon chairs a discussion with two leading experts on Jung, each offering a different perspective: Robert Rowland-Smith, philosopher, consultant, columnist and author and Gary Lachman; author of Jung The Mystic and bass-player and composer in a band called Blondie.

Listen here:

Legacy and Influence